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T I r I-: 




FDTDII OF TIE KOITH-WEST: 

k ♦ 




IX CONNECTION WITH 

The Scheme of Reconstraction 

ROBERT DALE OWEN. 



HILADELPHIA: 






THE 



FUTURE OF THE NORTH-¥EST: 



IN CONNECTION WITH 



THE SCHEME OF RECONSTRUCTION 
WITHOUT NEW ENGLAND. 



ADDRESSED TO THE PEOPLE OF INDIANA. 



More tliau a third of a century since, I found a home, Citi- 
zens of Indiana, among you. Kindly you received me. Largely 
have you bestowed on me your confidence. I owe to you 
honorable station and a debt of gratitude. Let me endeavor, 
now in your hour of danger, to repay, if in part I may, that debt. 

On the future of our country clouds and darkness rest. We are 
engaged in a war as terrible as any which history records ; an out- 
rage on civilization, if it be not God's agency for a great purpose. 
All good citizens earnestly desire its termination. The fervent 
longing of every Christian man and woman is for the restoration 
of peace. 

To this righteous desire there are addressed, especially here in 
our North-West, certain proposals of compromise and accommo- 
dation. Shall we take counsel as to what these are worth ? 
Can we reason together on a subject of interest more vital to 
ourselves and to our children ? 

But before we scan the future, let us glance at the past. Ere 
we advance, let us determine where we stand, and ascertain how 
we came hither. Looking back on our steps throughout the 
last two years, let us, .in a dispassionate spirit, by the aid of 
authentic and unimpeachable documents, very briefly examine 
the causes, underlying a stupendous national convulsion, which 
have resulted in the present condition of things. 

The secession ordinance passed the Convention of South Caro- 
lina, December 20, 1860. The- next day, December 21, the 
Convention adopted the " DeclA,i'^tion of Causes," justifying 
secession. In language plain as can be desired are these causes 
set forth. They all center in one complaint. Northern encroach- 
ment on slavery ; there is no other cause alleged. 

What proof of such encroachment is oflered? First, the 



2 THE FUTTRE OF THE NORTH-WEST. 

alleijation that " for j-ears past" fourteen Kortliern States, amoriff 
whicli Indiana is named, " have deliberately refused to fulfill 
their Constitutional obliirations" (as regards the fugitive-slave- 
law) by " enacting laws which either nullify the acts of Congress 
or render useless any attempt to execute them." But if you have 
looked through our 'statute-book, you know that no such law 
then existed," or ever existed, there. That solemn Declaration, 
inaugurating a war as fearful as ever desolated a nation, is based, 
so far as regards our ^tatc, on a statement either ignorantly or 
wilfully false. 

If, in regard to any of tlic other States named, there be truth 
in the allegation ; — if, in any one or more of these, there existed 
then, a sttite law nullifying or rendering nugatory a Constitu- 
tional ]-)rovision; — none knew better than these South Carolinians 
what tlieir easy, peaceful, etfectual remedy was : — an appeal to 
tJie Supreme Court. That Court has sovereign control over all 
unconstitutional laws. Had the South no chance of justice — ■ 
of more than justice — before the Supreme Court of the United 
States? Be the Dred Scott decision the reply ! 

A thing, to be credited, must have some semblance of common 
sense. AVill any man believe that the citizens of South Caro- 
lina — who would find it difiicult to prove that by the unconstitu- 
tionality of State laws at the North they had lost twenty slaves 
since tlieir State first joined the Union — will any sane man be- 
lieve that South Carolina sought to break up that Union for 
cause so utterly trivial as that ? 

Ko ! far deei)er must we search for the true cause. It is 
plaiidy set f(jrth in the latter paragraphs of the Declaration, in 
which' the Convention speaks, not of any special laws, but of " the 
action of the non-slaveliolding States.^' 

It declares that these States have " denied the rights of prop- 
erty established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the 
Constitution ;" that they " have denounced as sinful the institu- 
tion of slavery ;" tliat they " have united in the election of a 
man to the liigh oflice of President of the United States whose 
oiunions and iturj)oses are hostile to slavery ;" who declares that 
'' the Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half 
free," and that "the j)ublic mind must rest in the belief that 
slavery is in the course of nltlnuvte extinction." And it winds 
up by this assertion : " All hope of remedy is rendered vain by 
the fact that the jmljlic ojiiujoji of the Nortii has invested a great 
political error with the sanCtijns of a more erronious relioious 
belief." ^ . . ■* . 

These South C-arolinian sentiments, afterward endorsed by 
every seceding State, are do\ibtless, in substance, sincere. They 
may be received as the secession creed. Though loosely worded 



THE FUTUEE OF THE KOETH-WEST. 3 

thev are intelligible. Taken in connection with the steadily- 
progressing increase, disclosed each ten years by the census, of 
population and Congressional votes and consequent political in- 
Huence in the Free States as compared with the Slavic, they dis- 
close, beyond question, the true cause of the gigantic insurrection 
that has made desolate so many domestic liearths, and spread 
war and devastation where peace and tranquillity used to reign. 

It is, of course, not true, that the Northern States, as States, 
have denied the rights of Southern property, or denounced 
slavery as sinful. The Convention could only mean that certain 
citizens of these States had expressed such sentiments ; or as they 
afterward phrase it, that public opinion in the North had given 
the sanction of religion to a great political error. 

I pray you to remark that the South secedes from the Union 
'because of tliese opinions. She will not remain in fellowship 
with States in which such opinion-s are expressed. She holds 
that men ought not to be allowed to say or to write that slavery 
is sinful, or that religion does not sanction it. She hangs those 
who say or write such things within her own borders.* To 
satisfy her, such opinions must be suppressed also among us. 
But the Constitution provides that " Congress shall make no 
law abridging the liberty of speech or of the press." Here is a 
.difficulty. How shall we of the North satisfy a slaveholding 
South, unless we not only surrender the dearest of a freeman's 
rights, but also either violate the Constitution, or else ameiid it 
so that free thought and free speech shall be among past and 
forgotten things \ 

But these outspoken sentiments are not our only offense. 
We are accused of having elected a President " whose opinions 
and purposes are hostile to slavery ;" and who believes that 
" slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction." 

Because of the election of such a President, the slaveholders 
of the South secede. They do not wait to see what he will do. 
They secede betbre he is inaugurated. They secede, then, not 
because of his acts, but because of his opinions. 

His opinions on the subject of slavery; the same opinions 
wdiich, for a century past, have been spreading and swelling 
into action throughout the civilized world ; the same opinions 
which liave taken practical form and shape — which have become 
law — till not a Christian nation in Europe, Spain alone ex- 
cepted, stands out against theni. . -Look at the array of names I 

* " Let an abolitionist come within the 'b^oV^^rs of South Carolina, if we can catch 
him we will try him, and notwithstanding all the interference of all the Govern- 
ments on earth, including the Federal Government, we will hang him." — lienator 
Prenton, in debate in U. S. Senate, January, 1838. 

" If chance throw an abolitionist into our hands, he may expect a felon's death." 
— Senator Hammond of South Carolina, in Senate, 1836. 



^ 



4 THE FUTURE OF THE NORTH-WEST. 

England led the way. In 1834r she emancipated all her slaves. 
KiiTiT Oscar of Sweden fullowcd her example in 184G. Then 
came Denmark in 18i7 ; France, in 1848 ; Portugal, in 1856; 
the vast empire of Russia, in 1802. Finally, with nearly thirty 
years' experience in English colonies and Hfteen years' experi- 
ence in those of France before her eyes, plain, practical, un- 
iniagiiuitive Holland, by a vote in her Chambers of forty-five to 
seven, gave freedom, with compensation, to her forty-five thou- 
sand slaves : to take etfect on the first of July next. 

An<l our ofi'ense in isuuthern eyes — an oficnse so grievous that 
it is held to justify insurrection and its thousand horrors — 
our uui)ardunable sin is, that we have elected a President 
whose opinions regarding negro servitude are those of all 
Christendom ; whose belief that " slavery is in the course of 
ultimate extinction," is but the Y)lain inevitable deduction from 
the last thirty years' history of the civilized world. 

Observe, 1 pray, that in thus setting forth the causes which 
produced this fratricidal war, I have let the South speak for 
herself. Nor have I cited against her vagrant opinions, care- 
lessly expressed by her citizens. I have quoted, word for word, 
froni her solemn deliberate *' Declaration of Causes ;" that docu- 
ment which is to Secessiondom, what the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was to the United States. Out of her own mouth I 
Iiave condenmed her. 

Yet I am not assuming to sit in judgment on her motives. I 
but show you where the difliculty lies, and how deep-sunk and 
radical it is. Opinions (she declares) stand in the way. Based 
on a religious sentiment, these opinions render vain (she says) all 
hope of remedy ; for her Government is founded on opinions 
diametrically the reverse. And I show you further, that in this 
she stands alone among the nations calling themselves civilized. 
Alexander II. Stephens, whom, in February, 1861, she named 
her Vice President, with commendable frankness admits that 
she does so. In Savannah, the Mayor presiding, Mr. Stephens, 
addressing an immense crowd on the 21st of March following 
his electifjn, spoke thus : " Slavery is the natural and moral 
condition of the negro. This, our new Government, is the first, 
in the history of tlie world, based upon this great physical, philo- 
snpliical, and moral truth."* 

Alone slie stands ! the first government, in the history of the 
world, founded on tlie j'riiwiijde — " Slavery is good ; slavery is 
moral; slavery is just;" tln>.t)nly people in all the eighteen 

• Speech of Mr. Stephens as reported in the " Savomah Republican." It is 
thcnco copied into " J'ufnam'n Rebel/ion Record," vol. L, •document 46, pp. 44 to 49. 
Tlie litj,Hl,li,;tn, in publi.shin:; this address, says : " Mr. Stephens tookliis seat amid 
a IjiirKt of eiithuHia.srii and uppliiiHc, such as the Athenieum has never had displayed 
williiu ltd walls iu the meiuury of tiie oldest iuliabitant." 



THE FUTURE OF THE NORTH-WEST. 5 

ecntm-ies since Christ j)reaclied justice and mercy, who rose in 
rebellion because, among their brethren. His religion was ap- 
pealed to in favor of that emancipation which, within the last 
thirty years, England, and France, and Sw^eden, and Denmark, 
and Portugal, and Kussia, and Holland, have all conceded — 
a tribute to Christian civilization. 

Thus, then. Opinions not carried out in practice — opinions 
unfavorable to slavery expressed in the North, and held by the 
President elect — the same opinions that are entertained and 
have been acted upon by almost every civilized nation — these, 
according to Southern declaration, were the immediate causes 
of the war : opinions, not acts ; the acts were all the other way. 

Inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1861, Abraham Lincoln 
expressly reassumed, in his Message, the ground occupied by 
himself, and by a large majority of his supporters, before the 
election. '•' I have no purpose" (said he), " directly or indirectly, 
to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where 
it exists." He went much further. Alluding, in the same 
Message, to an amendment to the Constitution, which had 
passed Congress on the 2Stli of February, to the effect that no 
amendment shall ever be made to the Constitution authorizing 
Congress to interfere with slavery in any State, the President 
said : " I have no objection to its being made express and irrevo- 
cable." 

This was the first act : an offer sanctioned by Congress, en- 
dorsed by the President, so to amend the Constitution, that 
never, while the world lasted, should the power be given to 
Congress, by any subsequent amendment, to interfere with 
slavery. 

The scene when, on Mr. Corwin's motion, this amendment 
passed, is recorded in the newspapers of the day. "As the vote 
proceeded, the excitement was intense, and on the announce- 
ment of the result, the inexpressible enthusiasm of the members 
and the crowded galleries found vent in uproarious demonstra- 
tions. All feel that it is the harbinger of peace."* 

Was it the harbinger of peace ? Did this concession— bor- 
dering surely on humiliation — a promise, as to slavery, never 
through all time to amend our acts no matter how we may 
change our opinions — did this unheard-of concession to the 
slave interest conciliate the South, or arrest her action? It 
passed by, like the idle wind, ^tate after State seceded. Se- 
curity against the eneroachmentl ,9,ireged to be intended — the 
amplest within the bounds of pos'slhility — had, indeed, been 
offered ; but the remedy did not reach the case. Opinions re- 
mained unchanged ; and the rebellion was against opinions. 

* jy. Y. Commercial, Febrimry 28, 1861. 



6 THE FUTURE OF THE KORTH-WEST. 

;^^c•n in the North still said that human servitnde was sinful. 
The President still believed that "slavery is in the course of ul- 
timate extinetiuu." ]So fraternity with such men ! No obedience 
to such a President ! 

And yet this President, in the same Inaugural from which I 
have quoted, pushed forbearance to the verge of that boundary 
beyi>nd which it ceases to be a virtue. "'The Government " (he 
said to the Secessionists already in arms against lawful author- 
ty ) — " the Government will not assail you. You can have no 
conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." And in mild 
but cogent terms he reminded them of his and their relative 
situations, and of the final necessity which his position imposed 
upon him. " You have no oatli " (he said) " registered in 
Iieaven to destroy the Government: while I have the most 
solenm one to preserve, protect, and defend it." 

He spoke to the deaf adder. As if they had sworn before 
God to destroy the Government under wliicli, for eighty years, 
they had enjoyed prosperity and protection, they became the ag- 
gressors. Unassailed by that Government, they opened fire, on 
the memorable twelfth of April, from the batteries of Charles- 
ton, on Fort Sumter. 

Tiie echo of tliat cannonade reverberated throughout the 
Union. The North rose up, like a strong man from sleep. It 
needed not the President's Proclamation, issued three days 
thereafter, to call men forth. In, advance of that call, the 
farmer had left his plow in the furrow ; the mechanic had de- 
serted his workshop. The People had taken the war in hand. 

Such were the causes of this rebellion ; such were the acts on 
either side. 

AVliat have been the results? Tlie war, as wars in their com- 
menccnjcnt always are, was popular. Men engaged in it, as in 
a new and stii-ring enterprise men are wont to do, with en- 
thusiasm. Unmingled successes, a prompt and triumphant 
termination — these, as always happens, were confidently antici- 
l>ated. But the usual checkered fortunes of war attended our 
anus ; now a victory, now a defeat. The contest was protracted. 
Visionary hopes of speedy triumph faded away. Then came 
revulsion of feeling, sinking of spirit. There never was a pro- 
tra(;ted war in this world, no matter how successful in the end, 
without just such a reaction. Ifow did the souls of our revo- 
luti(;nary fathers, sore trie<l^*;iiik within them, year after year- 
how often did Washington liituK'if despair — before the final vic- 
tory that heralded Amencan'Independence ! England is still one 
of the greatest nations of the woi'hl, proud, powerful, prosperous ; 
vet, during iier five years' Peninsular war (in Spani against 
Kapuleonj the depresipiou in England was almost beyond ex- 



THE .FUTUEE OF THE NOKTH-WEST. l 

ample. At the commencement of that war the people accepted 
it with acclamation. Opposite parties in Parliament vied with 
each other in their zeal to vote men and money. Before a year 
had passed, how changed was the scene ! The retreat and de- 
feat at Corimna (the Bull Run of that year's campaign) plunged 
the nation in despair. Nothing was talked of but the stupid 
blunders of the Government, its absurd and contradictory 
orders, its gross ignorance of the first principles of war. Croak- 
ers spoke loudly of the folly of any attempt to check the pro- ' 
gross of the French arms in Spain. Universal distrust seized the 
public mind. Tlie Ministry kept their places with extreme dif- 
ficulty. But England's pluck bore her through. She spent 
four hundred and fifty millions a year, bought gold at thirty 
per cent premium to pay her troops, persevered to the end — 
and conquered : yet not till her Government stocks, ordinarily 
at 90, had come to stand habitually at 65 ; nay, before Na- 
poleon was finally conquered, had fallen to 53 (payable in de- 
preciated paper), and had been negotiated by the Chancellor of 
the Exchequer at that rate. 

Nor let it be imagined that it was the uninformed masses 
alone who despaired. The greatest men shared the doubt 
whether England was not tottering to her destruction. Sir 
Walter Scott wrote to a friend: "These cursed, double cursed 
news from Spain have sunk my spirits so much that I am al- 
most at disbelieving a Providence. There is an evil fate upon 
us in all we do at home or abroad." A letter of Sir James 
Mackintosh is still more gloomy. " I believe, like you " (he 
writes to a friend at Yienna), " in a resurrection, because I be- 
lieve in the immortality of civilization ; but a dark and stormy 
night, a black series of ages, may be prepared for our posterity 
before the dawn of a better day. The race of man may reach 
the promised land, but there is no assurance that the present 
generation will not perish in the wilderness." * 

Such is the dark valley, shadowed by despondency, through 
which even the most powerful nation, once engaged in a great 
contest of life and death, must consent to travel ere it emerges 
to the light. If we were not prepared to traverse its depths — if 
we have not coui-age to endure even to the end — we ought never 
to have entered upon tlie gloomy road at all. Many good men 
thought, at the outset, that the wiser course was to let the de- 
luded South go in peace. A. thousand times better to have 
done this than to falter and IqoV'back now, false to the great 
task we have undertaken, i-ecrt^ant to the solemn purpose on 

* A pamphlet by C J. Stille, on this subject, giving many more details, is well 
worth studying. Its title is, " Row a free people conduct a great war." Published 
by Collins, Philadelphia. 



8 THE FUTURE OF THE NORTH-WEST. 

which we have lavished millious of treasure, to wliich we have 
set the seal of our best blood. That which miglit have been 
graceful concession two years since, would be base submission 
to-day. 

Base and unavailing ! What are the proposals now, rife 
throughout the North-West, among the friends of peace-at- 
any-j)rice ? Worst devise of feeble or faithless heads, busily 
echoed by thousands of faint hearts, embodied in public resolu- 
tions, trumpeted through hundreds of newspapers, what is the 
favorite project, long matured in secret, that is urged upon you 
to-day by the enemies of the war and of the Administration 
that conducts it ? 

Of vast import is that project, yet a few words suffice to 
state it. The greatest of human changes can be expressed in 
cue word — Death ! 

The ]n-oject is, to reconstruct the Union, leaving out the New 
England States. 

This plan is spoken of as a compromise. The South, aban- 
doning her avowed intention to erect a separate purely slave- 
holding Confederacy, is to consent to receive into her fellow- 
ship a portion of the Northern States. The Northern States, in 
return, are to abandon six of their number ; those six in which 
tlie opinions against which the war is waged chiefly prevail. 

But this plan is no after-thought — no compromise whatever. 
It has been in the minds and intentions of the Southern leaders 
from the very commencement of the rebellion. 

I vouch for the truth of the following : Early in January, 
1861, a few days after South Carolina had seceded, and before 
any other State had followed her example, Senator Benjamin, 
of Louisiana, said to one of the Foreign Ministers : " A great 
revolution has commenced. It will end in the separation from 
the Union either of the slave States or of New England." 

Within a few days of the same time, before Jetferson Davis 
had left Washington, Mrs. Davis, conversing with a friend from 
Pennsylvania, who had been lamenting a probable separation, 
rei)lied, in 8ul)stance : "Do not atilict yourself. We shall not 
boiiarate from Pennsylvania, nor New York, nor New Jersey; 
they, like the Nortli-West, are our natural allies." 

It was the original ])lan, abandoned for a time, when the 
entire North rose in arms; uiuivowed even now; yet secretly 
fomented and sanctioned ever siyce the elections seen:ied to re- 
sult adversely to the Admifn^tlation, and since meetings and 
newspapers, calling then\selre4*Domocratic, have been sending 
forth, to an enemy in arms, woi'ds of sympathy and comfort. 

Well miglit such a jilan lie the first choice of the secessionists ! 
Well uiuy they intrigue with the North-West to favor and 



THE FUTUEE OF THE NOKTII-WEST. 9 

adopt it now ! Far better for them than a mere Southern 
Confederacv, never was a more specious nor a more daring 
device to uphold a sinking cause ! 

Look at it, I pray you ; not vaguely or hastily, but carefully, 
and in all its practical details. In the Senate, thirty Southern 
votes to twentij-tioo Northern; in the House, ninety Southern 
votes to a hundred and thirteen Northern. One House ho]je- 
lessly gone ; while twelve votes changed would give a Southern 
majority in the other. And when has Congress seen the day 
when twice twelve votes could not have been had from North- 
ern Representatives for any measure the South saw fit to propose ? 

Just North enough in the scheme to afford protection and 
support to slavery ; and not North enough to exert over it the 
slightest influence or control. 

Plausible, too ! " You have a majority in one House, and we 
in the other. What can be more fair ?" 

But mark the workings of the plan ! A free State applies 
for admission. The Bill must pass the Senate. "Will it pass? 
Slaveholders have to decide that question. Will they relin- 
quish the balance of power which they hold in their grasp ? 
While they retain their reason, nev^er ! A slave State for every 
free State admitted ; that will be the rule. The controlling 
majority in the Senate, therefore, perpetual ! 

Think, next, of the nominations by the President — a Pres- 
ident, of course, who believes in the justice, and in the per 
petnal duration of negro slavery — for none other will be suf- 
fered to take his seat ; nominations of Cabinet officers ; of 
Foreign Ministers and Consuls; of Judges of the Supreme 
Court ; of Generals in the army ; of men to all lucrative 
Post-offices ; of Registers and Receivers, and all the long list 
of other nominations to offices in the gift of the President and 
confirmatory by the Senate. Will the name of one man pass 
the ordeal who thinks human servitude a sin or an evil, or who 
believes that "slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction?" 

It will be a Senate requiring a political test for office that 
would have excluded Washington, if proposed for Brigadier^ 
General, or Jeft'erson, if nominated as a member of the Cabinet. 
For Washington, on the 9th of September, 1786, wrote to John 
F. Mercer, of Maryland : " It is among my first wishes to see 
some plan adopted by which slavery in this country may be 
abolished by law." * And Jefl^rson, in his " Summary View of 
the Rights of British America,";o^'igiually published in August, 
1774, said: "The abolition of'lVjmestic slavery is the great 
object of desire in these Colonies, where it was, unhappily, intro- 
duced in their infant state ;" f while, eight years later, in his 

* Sparks' Washington, yoL ix., p. 159. f Jefferson's Works, vol. i., p. 135. 



10 THE FUTUKE OF THE NOKTH-WEST. 

" Notes on Yirginia," he fulls into that " erroneous religious be- 
lief" which, according to the South Carolina Declaration, ren- 
ders hopeless all remedy for the grievances of the South. 
Adverting to a possible conflict, in the future, between slave 
and slaveholder, he says: "The Almighty has no attribute 
which can take side with us in such a contest."* 

If this view of revolutionary opinions should happen to sur- 
prise you, it will be because you are less accurately informed on 
the subject than the Vice President of the insurrectionary States. 
Let Mr. Stephens have credit for the honesty with which, in 
the address from which I have already quoted, he made this 
confession: "The prevailing ideas entertained by Jefferson and 
most of the leading statesmen, at the time of the formation of the 
old Constitution, were, that the enslavement of the African was 
in violation of the laws of nature ; that it was wrong in prin- 
ciple, socially, morally, and politically." The " ultimate extinc- 
tion" heresy, too, was shared by these men, as Mr. Stephens thus 
reminds us: "Slavery was an evil they knew not well how to 
deal with ; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, 
that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institu- 
tion would be evanescent, and pass away." f 

Reconstruct the Union without New England, and no man 
who shares these revolutionary sentiments, — no man who believes 
as Washington and Jefterson believed, — can ever reach the 
Presidential chair, or ever receive, from the occupant of that 
chair, any office, at home or abroad, civil or military, of any 
imjHtrtance whatever. 

The vast patronage of the Government — the tens of milliors 
annually in its gift — woidd become a gigantic bribe. Its demor- 
alizing influence in calling forth professions of a money-getting 
creed, woidd be immense. 

But well would it be if this wholesale premium on hypocrisy 
were the only evil, or the worst evil, which a South-controlled 
Congress would bring upon us. AVhat laws would such a Con- 
gress [)ass ? 

The characteristic political doctrine universally asserted 
throughout the South is this : "The Constitution provides that 
'the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and 
immunities of citizens in the several States.' Therefore'all citi- 
zens are entitled, wherever they may reside, to equal rights of 
property. Neither the Federal, Government nor a State has a 
right to discriminate l)etween\lilferent kinds of property, legally 
held. It is unconslitutional'trf'fleclare by law that any legally 

• Jefferton't WrUinr/ii, vol. viii., p. 4(i4. 

f AfliircHS of A. 11. .Slt'i.liLUs, reported, as stated in a previous uote, in tho""*S'a- 
tan/ia/i JirjjttLlican," 



THE FUTURE OF THE NOKTII-WEST. 11 

held property is property in one portion of the Union, and is not 
property in another. It is equally unconstitutional for the Fed- 
eral Government, or for any State, to pass laws which shall pro- 
hibit the transfer of any legally held property from one portion 
of the Union to another ; or to enact that any one species of 
property legally used in any one State or Territory may not be 
used in another. 

" But slaves are property : as absolutely and legally articles of 
nierchandise (though differing in kind) as horses, or cattle, or 
flocks of sheep ; property righteously as well as legally held; 
property the holding of which is based on a great physical, 
philosophical, and moral truth, and is sanctioned by religion. 

" Therefore, wherever one citizen may lawfully take or use his 
cattle and horses and flocks of sheep, another citizen may law- 
fully take and use his slaves. To prohibit him from so doing is 
a moral wrong, as well as an unconstitutional act." * 

That is the openly-avowed doctrine and demand of the South. 
Individual exceptions to such opinions there are, of course, in 
■the slave States, just as, in the free States, men are found \v'ho 
believe that slavery is enjoined by morality and sanctioned by 
religion. But the ofiicial declarations of the South prove, and 
no honest slaveholder will deny, that I have here fairly and can- 
didly stated the leading article, never to be relinquished, of 
their political creed. 

Upon this doctrine was based that claim of the South to equal 
rights of settlement in the Territories, the expected denial of 
which was one of the chief incentives to this war. But it is evi- 
dent that if the doctrine be tenable at all, it applies as justly to 
a State as to a Territory. An Indianian may buy a Kentucky 
farm and settle thereon with all his movable property. Shall 
a Kentuckian be forbidden to settle, in like manner, ou ^ farm 
in Indiana, unless he shall first sell the most valuable mo» able 
property he possesses ? 

It is not more certain that the earth will continue to revolve 
around the sun, than that the South, while slaveholding, will 
persevere, whenever and wherever she obtains the political as- 
cendency, in asserting and enforcing by law what she regards 
as her political rights in this matter. 

* If any man doubt that this is the claim maintained by the South, and short of 
■wliieh she will never be satisfied, let liim read the note on the last page of this 
pamphlet, on recent legal opinions and decisions touching slaves. 

These afford conclusive proof that th^ \5outh, with the power in her hands, 
would declare null and void, because in vi.'^la.tion of the Constitution of the United 
Stales, the provision in the Constitution of Indiana excluding negroes. Should 
we tolerate a similar provision excluding our horses and cattle from Kentucky ? 
A State cannot, without the consent of Congress, even lay a duty on property 
brought within her limits from another State ; far less, of course, can she exclude 
it altogether. 



12 THE FUTURE OF TUE NORTH-WEST. 

Clioose, then, fanners of Indiana ! citizens of the North-"West ! 
Strike off twenty-nine votes from the northern majority of the 
House. Abandon, hy the cession of twelve votes more, your 
present majority in the Senate. Consent to the dismemberment 
of your C(iuntry. Relinquish for ever to the South the balance of 
Icfjislative power. Do this, if you will. But bear in mind, that on 
tli'e day you assent to the scanthilous compact, you will have vir- 
tually "repealed that noble Ordixa>-ce to which the North-West 
owes not freedom only, but a social and commercial prosperity 
lar outstripping that"' of any slave-tilled State. Bear in mind 
that on that day you will have to decide, which of two alterna- 
tives you will advise your sons to select ; — to regard honest la- 
bor as unbecoming a gentleman, or to take their chance of 
working in sight of the overseer, side by side with the slave. 

Do all this, if good it seem to you. I make no argument 
against it. Facts, not counsels, are what I offer you. I but 
seek to shed daylight on the slaveholders' project; to show you, 
beforehand, what it is you are invited to do. 

The invitation is, to unite your fate with a slave empire ; not 
an empire part free and part slave, but an empire all slave ; an 
empire in every portion of which slavery will be permitted by 
law, and restricted as to the number of slaves by soil and cli- 
mate alone. The invitation is to become, yourselves, part and 
parcel of such an empire ; to enter into fellowship with those 
who, not content to legalize slavery, canonize it also ; regard it as 
philosophical, commend it as moral, extol it as religious : who 
adupt it as the corner-stone of the social edifice and the basis 
of the political system. 

The invitation is, to ignore, or to defy, the public sentiment 
of Christendom. The invitation is to stand still, or sink back, 
while all other civilized nations advance. An eminent writer, 
alluding to certain ancient collegiate foundations of Europe, 
declared that they Avere not without their use to the historian 
of the human mind : immovably moored to the same station by 
the strength of their cables and the Aveight of their anchors, 
they served to mark the rapidity of the current with wliich the 
rest of the world was borne along. Is such to be the fate and 
the vocation of America, once proud, powerful, freedom-loving? 
Is God's mighty current of Progress to sweep past her, as she 
lies paralyzed, weighted down, rock-stranded, by her political 
fcins'^ . : . , 

Tliis invitation is given (ri'i*. (f mditions. The first is, that 
throughout this slave empire*»Ti(Vman shall be allowed to deny 
the '* great j)hyslcal, philosophical, and moral truth", now first re- 
cognizctl, upon wliicli the new Government is founded ; namely, 
that slavery is the natural and moral condition of the African 



THE FUTURE OF THE NOKTH-WEST. 13 

negro. No man is to be permitted, on pain of pimisliment, to 
arg-ue that slavery is sinful, or that religion condemns it. We 
are required to go back to the spirit of "those days when it was 
held to be seditions to question, by sijeech or writing, the idea 
on which the existing Government was based ; to the Tudor and 
Stuart age of England : the only difference being that while 
nnder the old English rule, it was punishable as sedition to 
question the right divine of Kings, nnder the new Southern 
rule, sedition is to be punished when it questions the right divine 
of slavery. It will be a remarhable experiment, in the nine- 
teeth century, to establish a government upon a principle which 
will not bear question, or suffer an argument touching its truth 
or its merits. The despotism of Naples recently went down, 
crushed by the difficulties and the odium of maintaining, in 
these modern days, a similar state of things. 

The second condition demanded of ns is, that the North, 
before it is admitted to Southern fellowship, shall cast off' six of 
her States ; thus curtailing her power and her possessions by 
the surrender of nearly one-fifth of her population and more 
than one-fifth of her wealth. 

And here discloses itself the Hercules foot of this most auda- 
cious scheme. Think of proposing to Great Britain, that she 
should set Scotland adrift, or to France that she should detach 
and abandon all Normandy ! When was dismemberment ever 
dreamed of or demanded, except by a victor from a prostrate 
foe? 

And will no other demands be made based on the same rela- 
tive condition of the contracting parties ? The Southern insur- 
rection will have cost its authors a thousand millions, at the 
least. Can any man doubt that the North, once entrapped into 
this base compact, will be held to pay her full share of that stu- 
pendous sum ? — not only to accept as justifiable an insnrrection 
against lawful authority, but to pay what that insurrection cost ? 
And will nothing be included in that cost but the bare expenses 
of the war ? Is it not certain, beyond possible donbt, that there 
will be thonsands upon thousands of claims for damages — for 
plantations ruined, for dwellings destroyed, for cotton burnt, for 
nnndreds of thousands of slaves lost — from every Southern State 
that has been reached by our arms ? and that these claims will 
amount to hundreds of millions, exceeding probably the war 
expenses themselves ? On whoin is to be imposed the enormous 
tax that is to pay for these rava-^c^ of war ? On whom but on 
those who inflicted them ? And \V'lien such a tax is levied and 
paid by you, what acknowledgment can be imagined more prac- 
tically conclusive of the admission that the so-called insurrection 
was no insurrection at all, but, on the contrary, auioble war for 



14 THE FrTCKE OF THE NORTH-WEST. 

liberty and independence, just in its inception, triumphant in 
its result i 

Tlieir hewers of wood and drawers of water we shoiild become ; 
tlie recorders of their edicts ; the submissive agents to execute 
their good pleasure ! 

And if we yield now, so should we be ! If with half the ter- 
ritory constituting the Slave States virtually in our jjossession, 
we aceejjt at the hands of armed enemies the very plan they 
themselves had chalked out before a cannon was fired, richly 
shall we deserve our fate ! Under such a j^lan the insurgents 
would not merely have secured their own independence : con- 
querors over us, they would have mastered ours. Have we 
mercy to expect ? W oe to the vanquished ! 

Let there be no self-deception. If we are to do this thing, 
let us look it honestly in the face, and make plain to ourselves 
what it is we are doing. AVe give up ; we surrender ; we ac- 
knowledge (twenty millions against six) that we are heaten. Tet 
that is atrifie : the bravest may be defeated ; the holiest cause 
may fail. But we, if we take this step, must consent to repent- 
ance as well as to submission. ]3efore the world we must con- 
fess our sins. Before the world our acts must declare, that 
from the tirst, we were in the wrong and the South in the right. 
Before the world our acts must declare, that a thousand millions 
have been squandered — that a hundred thousand brave men 
have sunk from the battle-field to the grave — all in a disgraceful 
warfare, all in an iniquitous cause. 

And the retrospect, when this war, thus stigmatized as ag- 
gressive and faithicts, is brought to a shameful close ! The 
scene, when the thinned ranks of a hundred Indiana regiments, 
whose gallant deeds, untarnislied by a single disgrace, have 
been till now the pride and boast of their State — the scene of 
bitter hunuh'ation, when these brave and war-worn men shall 
return — to find themselves degraded from patriots to marauders ; 
their labors counted but an outrage, their wounds a disgrace ; 
gliall return, to hear their dead comrades spoken of as mer- 
cenaries hired by the oppressor, and justly overtaken by the 
(.)j)pres8or's fate; shall return, to find the war-made widow pen- 
cil )nh'ss, the soldier's orphan cast hel])less on the mercy of the 
woi-kl ! 

And then the scene — it may l)e far moi-o terrible yet — when 
'Indiana, base and craven, sliaU put torlli her hand atteni|)ting 
to sign the compact of degi'aaiOiion ! 

Atteiiipting to sign ! W'llf the attempt ever be consum- 
nuited ? In jjcace, without bloodshed, without the hand of 
brotijor raised against brother, of father against son — never! 
Until Indiana- shall have shared a worse fate than Missouri or 



THE FUTURE OF THE NORTH-WEST. 15 

Kentucky, or Yirginia ; until her fields shall be desolate, her 
cities spoiled, her substance wasted ; until we shall have 
learned, by sickening experience, the nightly terrors, the daily 
horrors of civil war — never ! Will the men who have stood 
firm while shot and shell decimated their ranks, turn cowards 
on their return to their native State, and patiently sufler it ? 
So sure as God lives, never — never! 

Let Indiana, belying the courage she has shown on the battle 
field, casting from her the last remnant of self-respect, false to 
her constitutional obligations, blind to a future of abject ser- 
vility, deaf alike to the w^arnings of revolutionar}^ wisdom and 
to the voice of Civilization speaking to-day in her ears — let 
Indiana, selling Freedom's birthright for less than Esau's price, 
resolve to purchase Southern favor by Northern dismember- 
ment and the world-wide contempt that would follow it — but 
let her know, before she enters that path of destruction, that her 
road will lie over the bodies of her murdered sons, past prostrate 
cabins, past ruined farms, through all the desolation that fire 
and sword can work. Let her know, that before she can link 
her late to a system that is as surely doomed to ultimate extinc- 
tion as the human body is finally destined to death, there will 
be a war within her own borders to which all we have yet 
endured, will be but as the summer's gale, that scatters a few 
branches over the highway, compared to the hurricane that 
plows its broad path of ruin, mile after mile, leaving behind, 
in its track, a prostrate forest, harvest crops uprooted, and 
human habitations overthrown. 

But the hurricane is of God's sending. Whether the tempest 
of war, from which He has hitherto mercifully preserved our 
State, shall now sweep over it, as it has swept over the ill- 
fated Southern border, depends. Citizens of Indiana, upon you. 
Courage, prudence, patriotism will avert it. Faint-heartedness 
and folly will bring it down upon our heads. If it come, God 
help the present generation that has to endure it ! God help 
our children after us, to whom we bequeath a North-West 
steeped in scandalous dependence, so long as she submits to 
her masters, and a prey to a second civil war, so soon as she 
awakes to her true condition, and draws the sword once more, 
to redeem the errors of the past ! 

; EGBERT DALE OWEX. 

March 4, 1863. { '/' 



NoTK, an to recent legal opinions and decisions toucJdng slavery.— The direct question 
whetlier slaves brought by their masters to reside in a Free State become free — in other words, 
whi'thi-r a State law be constitutional which declares free all slaves, not fugitives, who may como 
within the limits of the State,— has never been brought before the Supreme Court. 

But in the Dred Scott case the opinion delivered by the Court was based on principles, the 
practical application of which appears to establish the right of an owner of slaves to their " service 
and labor" throughout life, no matter where that life may be spent. 

Chief Justice Taney, in that opinion, declares : That negroes imported from Africa, were 
"broueht here as articles of merchandise;" that in every one of the thirteen colonies which, 
formed the Constitution of the United States, "a negro of the Africin race was regarded as an 
article of property, and held and bought and sold as such," and that, at the time the Constitution 
was adopted, the negro was " treated as an ordinary article of merchandise and traffic, whenever a 
proflt could be made by it" As such Chief Justice regards him. 

Dred Scott, the plaintiff in this case, a slave owned in Missouri by Dr. Emerson, had been 
taken by his owner into Illinois, kept there two years, then kept two years in a Territory of the 
United States north of the Missouri Compromise line, while that Compromise was In force, and 
hud then been brought back to Missouri. 

The Court, after reciting that " Scott was a slave when taken into the State of Illinois atid 
there hehl as e^ich,^'' decided that when brought back to Missouri he remained a slave, inasmuch 
as " bis status, as free or slave, depended on the laws of Missouri, not of Illinois.^'' 

So also of his residence in a Territory declared free by a law of the United States. The Court 
heid the law to be unconstitutional and void, because the Constitution recognizes a slave .as property 
and "makes no distinction between that property and any other." And the Court decides that 
iicott cannot be liberated under such a law. 

Though the question did not come before the Court for decision, whether Scott could have been 
held for life as a slave in Illinois, yet it is a fair inference from the above, that that question also 
would be decided in the affirmative. Either Scott, while residing with Dr. Emerson in Illinois, 
was his slave or he was not. If his slave, as the words of Chief Justice Taney would imply, then 
slaveholders may hold their slaves to service and labor in a Free State. If not his slave, he was a 
freeman. But if a freeman, how conld any law of Missouri be held again to reduce him to slavery ? 

In the Lemmon case (before the New York Court of Appeals, January, 18G0), in which the 
question came up, whether slaves owned by a Virginian in transit through the State of New York 
became free, the Court decided (Ave against three) in favor of the slaves. But the arguments of 
the counsel (O'Conor) assigned by the Stiito of Virginia for the slaveowner, clearly indicate the 
character and extent of Southern claims in this matter, and the principles upon which these are 
based, lie said : " Property in African negroes is not an exception to any general rule. Upon 
rational principles it is no more local or peculiar than any other property." And he argued that a 
Btate has the same right to declare a wife who might be brought within its limits to be '-free 
from all obligations of that condition," as to declare the same thing of a slave. 

It is to bo conceded that no Court has yet made a decision in conformity with the claims here 
put fortli, on behalf of Virginia. But can the nature and extent of the rights demanded by the 
South be doubted or misunderstood ? And whenever a Senate with a perpetual Southern m.ajority 
■ball have tho control of nominations for Judges of the Supreme Court, is it not morally certain 
that the decision. In the premises, of Judges thus selected will be in favor of Virginia's claims? 



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